One fascinating side to Discogs is the interaction with other people. As you are probably aware the whole database is crowdsourced, with people adding and improving (at least, that's the idea) data. At the moment I am writing this there are 388,098 users listed in the contributor ranking, meaning they contributed to one or more releases. That's a lot of people: taken together they would be the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, before Utrecht.
This also means that you might meet a wide range of characters, from many different cultures, with different motivations, and different opinions about what is the correct behaviour on Discogs.
One of my friends is doing a lot of janitor work on Discogs and he gets to see quite a few comments from friendly to annoyed, very angry, hostile, or even downright absurd.
Luckily my friend has been hardened by years of online disputes and, as the saying goes: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!" so if there is a bad comment, he just shrugs it off and continues, while staying correct and friendly.
When reading through the edit history or the forums you can see that some of these discussions can get quite heated. Some users even got banned because of abrasive behaviour. If you ever get caught in one of these discussions, just read this XKCD comic and keep in mind what your original goal is. In our case it is about correct data (because we happen to know, or are, completists so for us it is really important), but other people might have different goals, like selling as many records with minimal effort, or roughly keeping track of which records they have (without needing it to be 100% accurate). For others it is about reaching high status in the Discogs community and be seen as an expert. This is the landscape we have to work in and that can sometimes lead to tensions.
I want to walk through a few of the more absurd/angry replies that my friend got.
Clearly he did not understand that there is no such thing as "owning" a release inside the Discogs catalog and that it is a collaborative site. This seller also had trouble distinguishing between the catalog and his own shop and adapted entries in the catalog to match his own shop.
There are some users who just flag that the information is bad, and what should be changed and into what but don't actually change it! Instead, they leave it up to whoever comes after them to change it. Every once in a while they send a reminder. I have seen releases where this practice easily goes back 4 or 5 years. Whenever a change is made a reminder is sent to also change the other stuff, or the person who made the last change is asked to change the other things too. I don't know why this is and it puzzles me. Perhaps it is people trying to "teach" others, or not wanting to touch releases that they do not own. What I do know is that the result is that the correct information is in the edit history, but not on the release page, for years on end and that it would have been less effort if they would have just changed the releases.
There are also situations where it is simply unclear what to do. The whole "price code vs. distribution code" discussion for example has been ongoing for years and there are two camps. It doesn't matter what edit you make, you will always upset someone.
By the way, if you are are rankhunter, you should check out my Discogs rankhunting guide!
This also means that you might meet a wide range of characters, from many different cultures, with different motivations, and different opinions about what is the correct behaviour on Discogs.
One of my friends is doing a lot of janitor work on Discogs and he gets to see quite a few comments from friendly to annoyed, very angry, hostile, or even downright absurd.
Luckily my friend has been hardened by years of online disputes and, as the saying goes: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!" so if there is a bad comment, he just shrugs it off and continues, while staying correct and friendly.
When reading through the edit history or the forums you can see that some of these discussions can get quite heated. Some users even got banned because of abrasive behaviour. If you ever get caught in one of these discussions, just read this XKCD comic and keep in mind what your original goal is. In our case it is about correct data (because we happen to know, or are, completists so for us it is really important), but other people might have different goals, like selling as many records with minimal effort, or roughly keeping track of which records they have (without needing it to be 100% accurate). For others it is about reaching high status in the Discogs community and be seen as an expert. This is the landscape we have to work in and that can sometimes lead to tensions.
I want to walk through a few of the more absurd/angry replies that my friend got.
"Why are you changing my releases?"
A downright absurd one was from a seller who sent a direct message and asked (in Spanish) why my friend was changing all these releases (while he was merely correcting them). After explaining why (because of data correctness) he was basically told to leave the person alone.Clearly he did not understand that there is no such thing as "owning" a release inside the Discogs catalog and that it is a collaborative site. This seller also had trouble distinguishing between the catalog and his own shop and adapted entries in the catalog to match his own shop.
"Why didn't you fix everything?"
This one is something that is encountered quite frequently. Some people leave notes about changes that should be made in the edit history. For some of these edits you need to have quite specialist knowledge about either the label, other companies involved, or the artists and unless you are really deep into the subject matter you won't notice.There are some users who just flag that the information is bad, and what should be changed and into what but don't actually change it! Instead, they leave it up to whoever comes after them to change it. Every once in a while they send a reminder. I have seen releases where this practice easily goes back 4 or 5 years. Whenever a change is made a reminder is sent to also change the other stuff, or the person who made the last change is asked to change the other things too. I don't know why this is and it puzzles me. Perhaps it is people trying to "teach" others, or not wanting to touch releases that they do not own. What I do know is that the result is that the correct information is in the edit history, but not on the release page, for years on end and that it would have been less effort if they would have just changed the releases.
There are also situations where it is simply unclear what to do. The whole "price code vs. distribution code" discussion for example has been ongoing for years and there are two camps. It doesn't matter what edit you make, you will always upset someone.
"You are trying to take credit for my hard work"
There are also people who dislike it if you make a small correction, as they think you are merely rankhunting, or trying to collect votes. My janitor friend has been accused of that multiple times. Of course, after explaining why he had made the small edit, and inviting the person to do the same, there was only silence (as expected).By the way, if you are are rankhunter, you should check out my Discogs rankhunting guide!
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